Revisiting concerto dynamics

A recent conversation with a Berlin freelancer friend got me thinking once again about concerto dynamics. Without naming names, this friend of mine was describing a certain attitude he observed in a top orchestra - whereby the musicians attained the highest level of playing by, well, terrorizing each other. These musicians are like sharks, he said, just waiting to pounce if you made a mistake. It was basically a communal scare tactic, driving up the standard of playing by provocation, by instilling fear, by maintaining constant and intense pressure.

This disheartens me. Excellence in an orchestra can come out of mutual support and cameraderie, rather than out of such negative dynamics.

When a soloist is playing with an excellent orchestra, the ideal performance is one in which they *lift* each other - in which a healthy rivalry or a competitive edge can play a productive role.

But if the orchestra produces its virtuosity by means of mutual psychological torture, how can their "challenge" to the soloist rise above, well, bullying?

It's ten years since I finished my Ph.D. dissertation on solo-tutti dynamics in violin concertos and I'm still finding unanswered questions on the topic....

Jonas Kaufmann

I've been wanting to hear Jonas Kaufmann for ages. His recordings of Schubert Lieder and Carmen, arias with Abbado, etc. had piqued my interest. Tonight he sang at the Berlin Philharmonie with the Staatskapelle Berlin and the Staatsopernchor: Liszt's »Der 13. Psalm«
für Tenor, Chor und Orchester. I was way up in the nose-bleeds but even there I could hear 2 things. A magnificent voice, even more thrilling live than in recordings (just as I'd hoped). And a terrible piece! Wow, was Liszt hit/miss as a composer or what?

But back to the voice: it is rich. It penetrates. It carries. It has colors. All of this I had expected, and I was not disappointed. But the overriding impression I was left with was that Kaufmann's voice is an instrument and behind it is an intelligent musician. High praise for, like, a singer!

He got 5 curtain calls. It was clear the audience (a full house) had shown up especially to see him. I'll bet Kaufmann was glad to leave a Berlin stage without injury (this summer at the Waldbühne he was bitten by Anna Netrebko after an impassioned duet).

Janine Wildhage & Christophe Landon Rare Violins Exhibition

Janine Wildhage and Christophe Landon have a violin workshop in Berlin Mitte where they make violins and sell old Italian instruments. At last night's "Einweihungsfeier und Ausstellung," they threw a party to inaugurate their new exhibition of beautiful violins, old and new. Armenian virtuoso Mikhail Simonyan showed off his Landon Guarneri copy with a performance of "Armenian Prayer" and Ysaye No. 3. It had a gorgeous sound and a vast range of colors, which Simonyan brought out with a bow so spongy it could have been a bass bow. Having played another of Landon's Guarneri copies the day after he finished it back in New York, I could hear that Simonyan's years-long relationship with his had deepened and ripened its sound. His playing was confident and polished with lots of nice interpretive details and an unusual degree of bow control at the point.

After a few glasses of wine some of the people gathered started to pick violins up off the tables and play a few bars of Bach or Tchaikovsky. There were members of the Berlin Philharmonic there -- earlier in the day they had rehearsed with Nikolaj Znaider, who had, coincidentally, also visited Landon at the workshop that same day. Znaider is due to play Sibelius with the Berlin Philharmonic later this week (review to follow).

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra / Daniel Barenboim. Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 8 & 9 at the Berlin Waldbühne (21 August 2011)

1. The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra rocks. The string sections have a totally distinctive, aurally identifiable character that is not American, not European, but… well, Israeli-Palestinian, I suppose. As a side-note: it’s unusual these days to see any orchestra, anywhere, without any Asians

2. The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and Beethoven’s 9^th: an orchestra and a symphony that were made for each other.

3. How cool is Daniel Barenboim? More on his “Mahlerian” approach to Beethoven to come in my review for Strings Magazine. It’s like he’s like a wave and the musicians can ride on his energy. At the climax of the 9^th slow movement you could hear him grunting.

4. I’ve never seen an outdoor summer concert audience as well-behaved as these 20,000 Berliners (including President Christian Wulff)

5. The “Ode to Joy” comes over the loudspeaker-system as the Nazi architecture of the Olympia Stadion towers nearby.

Geigengeschichten...

There are not that many published stories about the origins and mystery of old violins: Albert Berr's _Geigengeschichten_ is one of them. Prof. Otterstedt at the Musikinstrumentmuseum put me onto it. It's the kind of book that makes me wish my German was better. It is full of storieslike the time Carl Flesch's Strad was stolen, or about the powers of a Tarantelgeiger who could cure spider bites by playing. The paucity of violin literature is not an accurate reflection of the degree of fascination that the topic holds. It is one aspect of classical music culture that regularly makes it into the headlines (Strads left in cabs or train stations) and was even turned into a film ("The Red Violin"). My current research topic being the "aura" of Cremonese instruments, I have been especially interested to follow the case of the fraudulent Geigenbauer Dietmar Machold. The "Madoff of the violin" has made a career swindling banks (and people) of millions of euros under the pretence of dealing in genuine Strads. He used his knowledge and skill to buy a castle and a yellow sports car. I, on the other hand, just write articles about Strads.

The Machold case gives me pause for thought. Here's a guy who took advantage of rarified knowledge -- few people in the world have the expertise to authenticate Stradivaris -- and he would have gotten away with it were it not for honest members of that small circle coming forward. Cheating the banks is one thing but he cheated countless musicians out of their life savings as well.

I'm gonna stick to writing the articles. And playing the Strads too, of course!

Gertrude Clarke Whittall

Gertrude Clarke Whittall (1867-1965): I only came across her name because the Paganini collection at the Library of Congress Music Section is named after her. Her name is all over my footnotes and references, yet I never knew who she was or even what she looked like. Recently when I was going through Boris Schwarz's books, I came across a book by William Dana Orcutt called. The Stradivari Memorial at Washington, the National Capital (NY: Da Capo Press, 1977). Opposite p. 20, who should I find but Gertrude Clarke Whittall, pictured in 1907. Who was this mysterious benefactress and what was her role in getting all those priceless Paganini materials to Washington, D.C.?

Boris Schwarz, Patricia Schwarz

Boris Schwarz was my kind of musicologist. More specifically, he was a violinist. He knew Menuhin, Flesch, and Stern. His father was Leopold Auer's pianist. Schwarz's book _Great Masters of the Violin_ (1983) remains *the* go-to book for information about the greatest violinists from Vivaldi to Perlman. When Schwarz died, shortly after the book's publication, the world lost its greatest authority on violinists and violin playing.
Recently I had the unexpected pleasure of meeting Patricia Schwarz, his widow, in midtown Manhattan. She is a lovely woman who is still active in bringing young Israeli musicians to the U.S. (among them Gil Shaham) and takes an interest in talented Chinese musicians (e.g. Jian Wang). She let me loose in her late husband's personal library. In a score of Beethoven Sonatas presented to the young Boris, I found the following inscription:

"Our greatest violinist, Joseph Joachim,
recently made the following statement:
If I do not practise one day, I notice it,
if I miss three days of practice, my friends notice it,
but if I miss eight practice days, the public notices.
Heed these words, little Boba, and you will surely achieve something worthwhile one day in
the realm of art."

[With thanks to my friend Thomas S. for help with the translation.]

The inscription is signed "Grunewald 1914" by a Julius Sennet or Seunet -- a violinist, I would guess. I'm still trying to figure out who he was while I work my way through the bibliographic minefield I found in Professor Schwarz's collection.

PatKop, Fazil Say, and multi-kulti Berlin

I took down my last post, on violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, because I ended up using some of it for my review on the Strings Magazine website:

http://smtemp.mugo.ca/Reviews/Performances/The-Crazy-Genius-of-Violinist-Patricia-Kopatchinskaja

(The title is my editor's, not mine!)

I wanted to pick up though on another strand of thought that emerged from my reviewing this performance, which was, after all, only part of an entire musical evening devoted to celebrating the incredible talent of Fazil Say.

A Turkish musician. In Berlin. An audience dominated by the bourgeois crème of the Berlin Turkish population. Not your usual Philharmonie crowd, nor the folks you see ambling down Kottbusser Damm.

So my thoughts are already turning idly to what it must mean for a musician like Say to be playing in Berlin for this audience (before PatKop comes out and, like, alters my violin-reality).

It’s not until Say, Kopatchinskaja, and percussionist Burhan Öçal play Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca -- in a wacky, jazzy arrangement (by Say) -- that it hits me: they are reappropriating Hapsburg “Turca” as modern-day “Turkei” for the hip Berliner.

Say, speaking in heavily accented German, poked gentle fun at Öçal, an actor from Turkey famous for playing gangsters in mafia movies (that figures, with his dark looks) as introductory banter before they went on to play a funked up improvisation on Turkish folk music in 10/8 meter that would probably have let those Silk Road Project guys drooling.

Now, I’m no identity-politics-musicologist, and even if were, I’d probably still struggle to form a coherent sentence out of the following keywords: postmodern Mozart -- Turkey – Globalization – Musical Identity – Islam -- Post-Race-World.

I mean, here’s a guy who has reclaimed Scheherazade with his “1,001 Nights in the Harem” Violin Concerto: turning the exoticization element of Orientalism on its head.

This point will probably be lost on Americans who may not know that “Orientalisch” in Berlin can describe anything from chow mein to bellydance.

What’s most admirable about Say though is that he is only unwittingly contributing to the “music & politics” debate. His relaxed demeanor and humor said it all: after a program of seriously wacky music, he introduced the encore as “ein ganz normales stück … von Beethoven” [“a totally normal piece… by Beethoven”], then proceeded to play Für Elise. For a few measures, that is, before Kopatchinskaja, and Öçal joined in and all hell broke loose.

Joachim Quartet Berlin

The Joseph Joachim Quartet, founded by the great Geiger himself, is still going strong. In its latest incarnation its members are all faculty at the Universität der Künste in Berlin: violinists Viviane Hagner and Latica Honda-Rosenberg, violist Hartmut Rohde, and cellist Jens Peter Maintz. On May 29 at the UdK Joseph-Joachim-Konzertsaal they presented an ingenious program of 2+4 : 2+4 (Mozart + Ravel) – by which I mean they played a Mozart Quartet (the incredible late quartet in B flat, K.589) and the formidable Ravel Violin-Cello Duo in the first half, and the gorgeous Mozart Violin-Viola Duo in B-flat and Ravel's unique Quartet in the second. Symmetrical programming. Equal division of labor. Genius.

All four members are extremely accomplished players. They gave polished performances with plenty of style and natural, unforced musicality -- an absolute pleasure to listen to. The second and fourth movements of the Ravel quartet were taken at hair-raising speed but without necessitating technical compromises. These four play well together, and it was hardly believable that it was their first performance as a quartet. That said, I was not the only person in the audience who noticed that amidst excellence, there was one star who really shone: the cellist. I first saw Mainz as a chamber musician partnering with Janine Jansen at the Kammermusiksaal. She is a top-level soloist and he entirely held his own in such august company. I’m excited to see the current configuration of the Joachim Quartet again – maybe they will even play music by Brahms, Joachim’s erstwhile "BFF."

Piecing Together the Story of a Strad… A follow-up to: "You can hold the Strad but you can’t play it" (May 4, 2011)

Rudolf Ernst Pliverics (1878-1964) was a Berlin violin maker and the co-author, with Albert Fuchs, of Taxe Der Streichinstrumente (Musikverlag F. Hofmeister, 1978).

George Schlieps (1894-1977) was a Russian-born German violin maker (he was the nephew of Alexander Glazunov) who worked in Helsinki, Stockholm, Estonia, Berlin, and England before immigrating to New York City in 1950. He and his son Armin worked for Rembert Wurlitzer and then opened their own shop. Armin Schlieps (1931-2005) was a bow maker who subsequently moved to Seattle and ran his own shop there.

The 1703 Strad now held at the Berlin Music Instrument Museum (Catalogue Number 4467) came into George Schlieps’s hands during WW2 according to Pliverics. He noted also that it had undergone multiple repairs and that the top had been replaced.

Schlieps lived in Berlin from 1944 till 1947 repairing violins. Who gave him the Strad? Where did it come from?

Museum records show only that the violin entered its collection in Charlottenburg, a predecessor of the present building next to the Philharmonie, on October 9, 1956. By then Schlieps was settled in New York.

Between 1947 and 1956 the violin was supposedly played by members of the Berlin Philharmonie, but we don't know who.

It was lovingly restored by Olga Adelmann (1913-2000) and subjected to a number of authentication tests. Dr. Annette Otterstedt, the musicologist who worked closely with Adelmann, provided me with all the known documentation concerning the violin. An expert on the Alemannic School [Die Alemannische Schule] of violin making (as well as being a keen gamba player), Otterstedt contends that the Cremona School was an aberration, not the Ur-School, of violin making—and that German craftsmanship was in fact much more prevalent and influential than has ever been acknowledged before by violin historians.

Otterstedt, who trained with the late Carl Dahlhaus, embodies an enviable synthesis of musicology and organology that is inspiring to me personally. Her research into, and championing of, Alemannic instruments is valuable on its own merits but also for deemphasizing and defetishizing Cremona instruments.

A Berlin Geigenbauer told me recently that he gets at least a few calls every week from strangers who have supposedly found long-lost Strads in their attics. He is good-natured but gets annoyed by all this.

The genius mythology surrounding Stradivari is a Romantic invention—he wasn’t “Beethovenified” until Fétis’s hagiographical biography came out in 1856—and it’s important to recognize that this inflated view of the man originated in a later era.

Even as we strive to cultivate historiographical awareness, though, we are faced with this tangible object, an instrument from early in his “Golden Period,” which poses real questions for us.

Alex Ross has recently published a series of beautiful essays and blog posts demystifying Wagner the gargantuan cultural icon by focusing on a few bars from Die Walküre, Act III. By keeping it real, and focussed, he arrives at a new understanding of Wagner’s greatness, stripped of heavy baggage. Piecing together the story of this little violin might just do the same for Stradivari… if only there were more pieces to work with!

In search of the ideal recording of Bach's St. Matthew Passion

Ever since performing the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin recently, I've become kind of obsessed with finding the perfect recording. Helmuth Rilling comes pretty close -- but Quasthoff (follow the link) to my ear sounds ein bisschen too self-confident in his expression of the text and the melody. "Mache dich mein Herze rein"? This should be sung with skill but also with humility, as my friend Simon Robinson did so beautifully in recent performances (Quastoff 0/Robinson 1). I just got John Eliot Gardiner's version which is damn near perfect only for someone with perfect pitch the half-step dip makes all my Affektenlehre verwirrt! If anyone has a favorite recording I wanna hear from you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjoGspzkYw8

"You can hold the Strad but you can’t play it"

Today my Strad-hunting took me to the Musikinstrumentmuseum in Berlin which boasts a 1703 violin in its collection. They pulled it from the display for me so I could meet it in a private room. I had a shoulder rest and bow ready so imagine my disappointment when the official handed me a pair of white handschuhe (gloves) and told me it was not in playable condition. A quick examination even by my untrained eyes told me why: this was a battered instrument, a survivor of domestic abuse, copious knocks and bruises, and multiple repairs. Its right f-hole was askew and someone had wound an E-string adjustor into the grain so bad it had dented the wood and formed a black mark. My heart ached for this instrument: it was the Frankenstein of violins! I was curious about its provenance but it is shrouded in mystery. I don’t know where it went after leaving Stradivari’s workshop; all that is known is:

· It was brought to Germany from Russia in the 1950s or 60s by a Geigenbauer named Schlieps, according to a dealer called Rudolf Pliverics.

· It was authenticated in 1969 by Malcolm R. Sadler of Ealing-Strings in London

· According to a dendrochronologist at Hamburg University in 1993 it was definitely made of wood dating from no later than 1680.

· It was played by various members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

· It was restored by Geigenbauerin Olga Adelmann, who was the first-ever female violin-maker, and trained during the Nazi era (oh my god, can you imagine?)

[Pictures to follow]

Strad-hunting (Part 3/3)

I forgot to post this until now. In the middle of March I learned that the 1732 “Red Diamond” Stradivari was being repaired at a New York City luthier’s and went on the hunt. I found the luthier, but the violin sadly was not available that day. The scent of the trail did however lead to a wonderful opportunity to play a Vuillaume that once belonged to Spivakov (super bright E string, of course, and blazingly brilliant in Tchaikovsky), a 1704 Stradivari (actually kind of disappointing—it had undergone multiple repairs), an Andrea Amati (nice! not sure what year) and—best of all—a seriously light bow made by François Nicolas Voirin (1833-1885). I think he was related to Vuillaume (cousins?); he revolutionized the Tourte model by making the stick thinner yet somehow stronger. I hadn’t realized until that day what an enormous difference it makes to play with such a light and beautiful bow: my right arm felt unworthy. The coveted Strad may have failed to materialize, but… well, as a wise man once said, you go looking for “this” and you find “that.”

[Pictured: the Vuillaume]

Kalliwoda Duets for Violin and Viola, Op. 208

The string duo repertory is not huge but there are some gems—among them Mozart’s Duos for Violin and Viola and Duos for Violin and Cello by Ravel and Kodaly. The challenge for the composer is to create a full sonority without sounding like a string quartet with members missing. Mozart’s Duos are at times brilliant, like the Sinfonia Concertante without the orchestra (Brahms didn’t write any duos, despite having written a Double Concerto for Violin and Cello).

The Duos by Jan Kalliwoda (1801-1866) are new to me. His solutions to the problem of how to write for the 2 instruments together struck me as ingenious, while stylistically he tips his hat at Schubert and Dvorak—unsurprisingly for a violinist born and trained in Prague. But his voice is entirely his own. Of the two, the second in G-Major is the more striking: from the opening Pastorale (a Romantic-Edenic throwback) and Allegro moderato in G-minor (might Mozart have sounded like this if he’d lived a few more years?) to the interplay of pizzicato, counterpoint, and occasional flashes of virtuosity in the last three movements, the possibilities of violin-and-viola texture are explored fully. He succeeds in his own individual way at making this combo sound complete. As a violinist, I’ve long felt musically “completed” when partnering with a pianist; who knew I could feel the same with a violist?

Bach's Chaconne and ちょうちょ

Hilfsaktion für Japan was the latest in a series of events organized by Japanese artists based in Berlin to raise funds for relief efforts in the aftermath of the tsunami. More than 100 artists donated paintings, drawings, and photographs, which were given away at a raffle at the Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum in Dahlem. I would guess that in the course of one afternoon, they raised about 20,000 Euro—all to go directly to the Red Cross.

Before the raffle there were performances given by musicians, a dancer, and a poet. Violinist Sophia Jaffe played Bach’s D-minor Partita in its entirety – with Zehetmairesque ornaments on the repeats, beautiful flowing lines, lots of intelligent ideas, and unforced gravitas – and then blew us away with a stylish Ysaye No. 5. Soprano Yumiko Sato sang traditional Japanese folksongs, accompanied by guitarist Takeshi Nishimoto, including ちょうちょ[butterfly]. Worlds apart musically, but what a poignant reminder of how music can make us all more human somehow – and always can, not only at times like these.

D-flat Major: Chocolatey

This post grew out of a lively conversation with a conductor friend.

C Major: pure

C Minor: tragic

D-flat Major: chocolatey

C# Minor: brooding yet sophisticated

D Major: radiant, natural

D Minor: death, hell, damnation

E-flat Major: heroic (of course)

E-flat Minor: syphilitic

E Major: chirpy

E Minor: loss

F Major: earthy

F Minor: dread

Gb Major: dreamy

F# Minor: bitter

G Major: everything is okay

G Minor: melancholy

A-flat Major: buttery

A-flat Minor: consumptive

A Major: sunshiney

A Minor: mundane morose

B-flat Major: gentle, good-natured

B-flat Minor: nearly syphilitic

B Major: blazing bright

B Minor: dignified

Response: "To Tug Hearts, Music First Must Tickle the Brain"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/science/19brain.html?pagewanted=4

Scientists are trying to understand what makes music expressive? The day will come sooner when men will understand women.

While I applaud efforts to understand why we can be moved by certain musical experiences, especially in populist writing of this kind, I have to admit I tend to find this type of over-generalized journalism a little frustrating. How can you talk about “music” as if it were one thing and lump together (gulp) Paul Simon and Chopin? It does not take a “music scientist” (whatever that is) to figure out that different kinds of music evoke their own contexts and appeal to different sides of us: emotional, intellectual, physical, spiritual. I play Bach; I research Paganini; I dance to Tito Puente. They push different buttons in me. And that’s just me!

The article is a fruit salad of apples and oranges. The break in the ostinato pattern Paul Simon describes is a rhetorical effect. The “sun” metaphor in the repeating melody Yo Yo Ma plays is a facet of phrasing. Practising musicians master an entire palette of effects, rhetoric and phrasing included, that give expression to the music they are playing—and the role of performers in relation to composers varies greatly depending on the style and genre, a sensitivity to which is developed over years of study and experience. The Hermann Hesse quote is taken out of context: the violinist wishes to “disappear” into the music because that is the aesthetic ideal of Werktreue, or fidelity to a work, which is specific to a particular musical tradition, not all. Expression is a tough nut to crack. It resists generalization.

Admittedly musicologists have not been terribly thorough in accounting for emotional (or physical) responses to musical stimuli, since the discipline by its nature favors thought. But neither is Western science poised to unravel the mysteries of how musical input works on our complex mechanisms. Computerized manipulations of a pianist’s note durations playing Chopin may be well meaning, but if the conclusion is that people prefer listening to the playing of a human being over that of a machine, then how worthwhile was the funding for the research? I mean, DUH!

Daniel Levitin, who is featured in this article, is doing fine work involving audiences in interactive concerts in collaboration with my friend Edwin Outwater—at which listeners are asked to respond in real time to a live performance of Beethoven (“Beethoven and Your Brain”). We need more events like this that promote appreciation of classical music in a way that is accessible, fun, and not condescending.

I’ve always thought that books about musical performance are like books about riding a bicycle. We can try to put the ineffability of music into words but let’s try harder not to forget that verbalizing such experiences falls way short of the experiences themselves. It’s hard enough to be present to experiences as they happen, musical or otherwise, without running the risk of ruining them by jumping to conceptual formulations.

Haunted by Paganini’s Ghost…

Sometimes I get the feeling I am haunted by Paganini’s ghost. Not long ago I was browsing in a Berlin bookshop and came across Die Violine des Teufels, a murder mystery by Joseph Gelinek. The cover caught my eye because it features a winged incubus playing the violin in silhouette. Originally published in Spanish and translated into German in 2009, the blurb reads as follows:

What does Paganini, the "devil’s violinist," have to do with a murder in Madrid today? The violinist Ane Larrazábal is found strangled at one of her celebrated concerts. In bloody writing the Arabic word for "Satan" is emblazoned on her chest. And her unique Stradivari carved with the Devil's Head is missing – could the instrument really be cursed? The trail leads the police to the macabre death of the master Paganini himself, almost 200 years ago ... oppressive power, intoxicating sound - the new musical thriller by Joseph Gelinek!

Buried amidst the prose is a chart showing where the murder took place in the auditorium and a cryptogram spelling out a clue on staves of music.

Discovering Weinberg in Berlin

Recently I’ve had the absolute pleasure of discovering not only a piece of music that is new to me, but also a composer I never knew before. After sight reading Weinberg’s String Trio, op. 48 (1950), relishing the forte repeated downbows and teetering on melodies with 5 or 6 leger lines, I was blown away. “Who was this guy?,” I asked. The cellist said to me with a smile, “aren’t you a musicologist?” JZ, this post is for you :)

Mieczyslaw Weinberg or Moishei Vainberg (1919-1996) was born in Poland but lived most of his life in Moscow. We noted the affinity with Shostakovich and so has everyone else, it seems: he is widely recognized as a member of a Russian triumvirate of composers along with Prokofiev and Shostakovich. In fact, Shostakovich (13 years his senior) believed in Weinberg’s great musical talent and supported him as a mentor and close friend. Weinberg was a pianist and violinist; he composed 22 symphonies, 7 operas, and numerous works of chamber music, championed by the likes of Kogan, Gilels, and Rostropovich.

Gideon Klein, Weinberg’s exact contemporary and fellow Jew, also composed a String Trio (1944) just weeks before he perished at a concentration camp. Weinberg lost most of his family in the Holocaust. What a privilege it is for us to discover and to play this piece—in Berlin, of all places.

The Japanese Catastrophe: Musicians’ Responses

In the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in my country, I have been touched to see the responses of musicians from around the world. Here are some highlights:

· Daniel Harding went ahead with a performance of Mahler’s 5^th Symphony in Tokyo on March 11 for the 50 people in the audience who managed to trek there (and took a photo with the entire audience in the foyer)

· Paolo Alberghini dedicated the Stradivari Evenings concert on March 12 to all those who lost their lives and their families

· The NHK Orchestra proceeded with their tour of Canada with Andre Previn who initially refused to comment on the events in Japan but later decided to contribute part of his fee to the Red Cross Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami Relief Fund

· Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic dedicated their performance of Takemitsu's Requiem for String Orchestra on March 17 to the Japanese people; Esa-Pekka Salonen appeared on stage alongside Gilbert to appeal for donations

· My friend Kenji Tajima has organized a benefit concert at Gizzi's Café in NYC on April 9

P.S. In the midst of all the headlines, the sad news of Yakov Kreizberg’s premature death fell threw the cracks. He was the principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra where I had one of my first trials playing Violin I & II rank&file. I still remember the incredible spirit of this orchestra, going on tour to the Concertgebouw and playing at the Proms: Mozart’s Haffner Symphony and the Korngold Violin Concerto with Gil Shaham. Kreizberg’s passing is a loss to the entire global musical community.

New York Philharmonic (March 3, 2011)

For his debut with the New York Philharmonic, Daniel Harding conducted Mahler’s Fourth Symphony—as part of a cycle of Mahler symphonies in honor of the former director of the orchestra. I fell in love with the symphony as a teenager and have listened to many recordings so I know that, for instance, conductors see how much they dare to slow down on the first three notes of the violin melody at the beginning of the first movement: D-E---F#--------…. (just think Knappertsbusch).

Daniel’s interpretation was original and inspired. He sprinted through those notes, and every time the theme came back, it was almost a Boulezian modernist account of the score, just letting the music do its job without any added schmalz. The first movement was fast. The second movement was fast. The third movement, the emotional core of the symphony, thus became the large-scale structural downbeat after two upbeats: a kind of Wagnerian stollen-stollen-abgesang writ large. Out-Bernsteining Bernstein--what a brilliant decision, bringing added expansiveness and intensity to Mahler’s gorgeous melodies, grinding dissonances, and harmonic turns (and in ten years I’ve never heard the orchestra sound better than they did here). The finale still brought the expected deus-ex-machina but instead of being the moment of maximal gravitas, it brought lightness--a transcendence that floated into E-major brightness rather than pushing up to it as it does in so many accounts (and soprano Lisa Milne sang beautifully). I’ve always thought Daniel was immensely talented—now I think he might be a genius. And he’s still only in his mid-30s. I wonder if he likes Boston….

The symphony followed a clean, no-nonsense rendition of Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with Glenn Dicterow as soloist—what a great chance for Daniel to interact closely with the orchestra’s concertmaster—with a color palette encompassing capriccioso, scherzando, con passione, dolce and avvivando (the last an unusual marking on Szymanowski’s part). Dicterow played beautifully, if on the safe side, although his egolessness even in the long cadenza written by Pawel Kochánski (1887-1934), the concerto’s dedicatee and first performer, made me wonder if I mistook natural modesty for safety. Apparently Szymanowski believed that in collaborating with Kochánski for this concerto, he had created “a new style, a new mode of expression for the violin.” According to the program annotator James M. Keller, the composer wrote in a letter to the violinist’s wife in 1920:

All works by other composers related to this style (no matter how much creative genius they revealed) came later, that is through the direct influence of Myths and the [First] Concerto, or else through direct collaboration with Pawel.

I’m curious to learn what new violinistic possibility Szymanowski thought he’d discovered with Kochánski – it could be that Harding and Dicterow know already.

IL GIARDINO ARMONICO at Zankel Hall (February 24, 2011)

Il Giardino Armonico—“The Harmonic Garden”—offers a unique kind of musical experience. Because Baroque music has a strong harmonic structure but driving teleological narratives of tonality were a later development, Vivaldi played as if it were Brahms shows up a glaring anachronism. Play Vivaldi like Vivaldi--with oodles of flair and panache—and what you get is not the large-scale harmonic movement of Romanticism but little bursting moments of florid, lush, fragrant, harmonies. A false relation here, a fermata there, a run into a cadence—each gesture with its own color and smell, putting you firmly in the sensory now, without a care for when the ritornello will arrive in the dominant.

Founded in 1985, this all-male, all-Italian group offered Baroque music performance of unparalleled vitality and stylishness, flawless ensemble, and vibrant virtuosity. In a program of Castello, Merula, Legrenzi, and Galuppi, as well as Vivaldi, the seven musicians (2 violins, viola, cello, bass, lute, and harpsichord) showed just how fresh this music could sound. They all play Baroque style; they tune to a modern A; the leader ties his violin to his neck with a long scarf. The string-players breathe together and co-ordinate bow speed and bow pressure as if telepathically, using the upper half of the bow a lot more than one might expect; vibrato is used sparingly and to great effect, especially when slowed down to a wide wobble on long notes; the dynamics ranged from a barely audible ppp to fff, sometimes one right after the after; cadences were ornamented with improvised or semi-improvised fioritura by leader Enrico Onofri and lutist Luca Pianca. Merula’s Ciaccona ended with Pianca playing the ground bass pattern solo, diminuendo, and then quoting a blues break with a similar melodic contour. Laughter and applause began spontaneously in the audience. Oozing style, Il Giardino Armonico’s live renditions are as spotless as their recordings and, if anything, exceed them in directness and excitement.

They were joined by their director Giovanni Antonini as flute/flautino soloist in three Vivaldi concertos (RV 444, 441, and 443), almost a masterclass in concerto performance: pitch-perfect and dramatized with virtuoso pizzazz and gestural freedom throughout all the passagework, runs, and cantilena. It can’t be easy to reconcile this instrument with masculinity: that Antonini imbued his performance with virility does him credit in itself.

Vasily Vasilievich Bezekirsky (1835-1919)

He played cards with Wieniawski. He was friends with Bulgakov, who adored Glinka’s Romances. He was at Tolstoy’s house when Laub and Rubinstein played the Kreutzer Sonata. He saw Joachim and Sivori and Sarasate play live. He played a Maggini that once belonged to Vieuxtemps. He played chamber music in private with Clara Schumann and with Liszt. Who was this person?

As part of my ongoing research, I’ve been looking into the life and career of Russian violinist Vasily Vasilievich Bezekirsky. He studied with Léonard and, at Joachim's suggestion, Kömpel (a student of Spohr) – which made him a Russian/Franco-Belgian/German school amalgam. He was a soloist and composer in his own right and spent most of his career as leader of the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra.

Bezekirsky withheld his memoirs from publication for years because he feared the persecution of censorship. Now translated into English, they offer a glimpse into the fascinating if restrictive world of Russian musical life in the second half of the 19c – a world where it was not uncommon for more than one solo violinist to appear on the same program.

He relates how, at a concert in 1852, Wieniawski played the first half and Neruda the second and, when she got an ovation and flowers from Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski “suddenly appeared again on the stage with his violin and loudly demanded that he wished to demonstrate his superiority over Neruda.” (OMG)

In 1867 Voronezh, Bezekirsky played the first half of a concert, Apollinaire Konstki the second, then they played duets.

In 1872 Moscow, Joachim performed Spohr’s 2 Violin Duo with Laub. Around the same time, Bezekirsky performed Alard's Concerto for 2 Violins with Sarasate.

All this is making me think harder about the nature of soloism and the role of rivalry and competition in defining musical identity.

Guarneri del Gesù... perfection!!!

OK, so after 48+ hours of what I can only describe as withdrawal symptoms, I went and played a 1734 Guarneri del Gesù that once belonged to Daniel Guillet of the Beaux Arts Trio... the closest thing to perfection I am likely to experience in my lifetime. Don't get me wrong, I felt like I'd tasted heaven with the Strad earlier this week. But this violin was... everything you could wish for and then some. No wonder it has a price tag of $4 million. I played Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Schoenberg, Mozart, Beethoven, Korngold, Barber, Brahms, Bach (lots of Bach)... even Gilles Apap's Mozart 3 cadenza, and this violin just lapped everything up. I looked at my watch and 90 minutes had passed. I was in disbelief. I also tried a 1732 Strad that gave me an appreciation of the Golden Period Strads and a couple of Bergonzis (one of which reminded me of the Long model Strad I played earlier). I also played Christophe Landon's brand new copy of the dreamy del Gesù--raw but full of exciting potential. So, in the interests of full disclosure: 1) I was allowed to take photos (which I will upload soon) and 2) when i started playing the Guarneri I had to stop every few seconds because I could not stop saying "OH my GOD." Today is a day to be glad I practise every day. And my new ambition (pending lottery draws)? To play every Strad and Guarneri in existence.

Note for my friends and students: you know how you go through life giving yourself grades? An A for this, a B+ for that. Well, this violin was perfection. It was an A++ experience all round. I feel privileged that my lifetime coincided with this violin's, and hope that you all get to feel something like this somehow, someday.

I played a Strad today!

I woke up this morning and thought to myself, "I'm going to play a Strad today." And I did! What I wasn't counting on was that it would play me as well.

So, I went along to the luthier's shop and was allowed to play for about 20 minutes. They left me in a small hall and put the violin on the desk. It was a beautiful long model Strad from the early 1690s. And no, I wasn't allowed to take pictures :(

I started playing Bach and this weird thing happened--as I placed my fingertips on the strings, it was like the violin was giving back to me. I'm telling you, that thing had a life of its own. It was like riding a wild horse. My vibrato was bouncing back into my body with mysterious force, through my fingertips and into my arm.

Then I tried some Tchaikovsky and the sound just brightened up. This violin likes Tchaikovsky. It likes Wieniawski and Paganini, Ravel and Barber. It likes sharp keys. It didn't like Beethoven or Brahms so much. Mozart, some. I would guess it has been well loved by a violinist who specializes in virtuoso showpieces.

My friend who was listening pointed out that I could use less bow pressure and she was right. The less I did, the more the violin opened up. On some notes the resonance was so rich the notes kept ringing long after I'd stopped bowing, even without vibrato.

It wasn't 10 times better than my 1990 violin (which I love, by the way). Or 100 times. It was about 10,000 times better.

There were no weak spots, no wolf notes; it had power on the G string and way up on the E string. Chords just went "ping!"--I hardly had to do anything.

On the question of aura, it really is true what they say. Playing this violin was like dancing with a person who has their own inclination and taste, style and personality, and who has been dancing really really well for 300+ years.

The luthier was kind of secretive about its provenance, history, and value --all he would say was that it belonged to a Tchaikovsky Competition winner within the last 20 years--because it is apparently up for sale. I'm off to buy a lottery ticket.

"Violin Porn"

"Violin porn" is not my coinage.

John Marchese writes about it in his book to describe collectors, dealers, and violinists when they talk over-enthusiastically about curves and f-holes ( _The Violin Maker: Finding a Centuries-Old Tradition in a Brooklyn Workshop_ (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), p. 107).

It works kind of like food porn, I guess. Multi-pixalated shots of gateaux chocolat, close-ups of Strads (Le Messie is in the photo to the right): you get the picture.

Or how about this:

"[The]... capaciousness of the chest, combined with the proportions of thickness of the back and belly, from whence results the sound produced by the vibrations of the air under the action of the bow, which sets the sonorous body in motion."

That was François-Joseph Fétis writing in 1861 on the qualities that distinguish Stradivaris from other instruments. So how come nobody ever called the Gender Studies Police on him?

The Height of Violin Nerddom

The controversy continues over the authenticity of the 1716 "Messiah" Strad, said to be a fake by former MET Museum curator Stewart Pollens.

http://soundpostonline.com/archive/fall2000/page17.html

Long story short: there is a break in the succession of ownership of this violin, allowing time for a switch job; the date of the wood is contested; its internal features do not match early 19c descriptions by experts.

Pollens has supposedly become an outcast among violin luthiers for his claim, revisited in his 2010 book _Stradivari_. His reliance on dendrochronology (tree ring dating) led the editor of the above website to dub the controversy "tree ring circus."

And I thought *I* was a violin nerd...

We'll probably never know if it's the real deal. If it were up to me I'd start by playing all the world's known Strads then test it against them. That will cost time and money--another one for the "grant proposal" pile.

Vadim Gluzman, Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 (Carnegie Hall, January 30, 2011)

People say Vadim Gluzman’s playing is “big” and reminiscent of David Oistrakh—for sure, he has more power coursing through his pinky than many others have in all their fingers combined. There is an unmistakable intensity to his sound, too. But his playing offers so much more: the tone he draws out of his 1690 ex-Leopold Auer Stradivari is to die for—the high notes of the second movement glittered. I could not hear any weak link in his playing. It’s as if he took all the best elements of his training with Zakhar Bron, Yair Kless, and Dorothy DeLay and then crystallized them. Now 37, he is a true artist.

Performing with the conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Gluzman did double duty as soloist and conductor—and admirably so. Still, I couldn’t help wishing for a separate conductor to help create the dynamic friction between orchestra and soloist that is needed to lift both up. The excitement of some of the tempo changes and dramatic shifts in mood, especially in the first movement, got lost in the interest of safety of ensemble.

For an encore, Gluzman played Ysaÿe’s Obsession -- super fast, clean, not fussy, and always stylish.

On the hidden benefits of comic books

Kin-iro no Corda by Yuki Kure is a Japanese Manga about a student at a music conservatory who gets a magic violin from a fairy and plays her way to success and popularity. Like its predecessor のだめカンタ-ビレ, it is cringe-worthy cute and teenyboppy, with a large following in Japan and Taiwan. This one is also based on a video game, apparently (I confess I'd like to play it--just once).

It must be doing wonders for music education when storylines introduce so much repertoire. At a school music competition, the students gasp when the top violinist busts out Beethoven's Romance No. 2 instead of Paganini, his more usual fare. These comics are silly but they are doing important work in terms of developing classical music appreciation among young people. From what I hear, CD sales of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue soared after it was featured on the のだめカンタ-ビレ TV-series.

This kind of thing would never work in the USA. Can you picture anyone from Glee singing Verdi or Wagner? The day Sue Silvester compliments Mr. Shuster on his hair would come sooner.

Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition 1967

The top 3 prizewinners at the 1967 Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition were:

1) Philippe Hirschhorn (Paganini 1)
2) Stoïka Milanova (Ravel Tzigane)
3) Gidon Kremer (Elgar Concerto)

When I listen to the recordings I can't help but wonder what has happened to violin playing in the past 40+ years. People often speak nostalgically of the "Golden Age" of violinists (1930s and 40s)--how you could instantly tell apart, say, Kreisler from Heifetz--but even in recordings from the 1960s individuality is way more discernible than nowadays.

Hirschhorn's Paganini is brilliant--no safety nets, and absolutely assured, while still managing somehow to stay light. He deserved to win. He also deserved more recognition during his lifetime, tragically cut short by a brain tumor at age 50.

I'd never heard Milanova before--judging by her strong, gutsy playing, she should not have subsequently fallen into obscurity.

But the stand-out recording for me is Kremer's. He was only 20. He plays the first movement like his life depends on it. There are moments of raw eccentricity in II and III (he has since become a mature eccentric).

Here's a brief excerpt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDfLi7-QHZ0&feature=related

The Physiology of Violin Playing

In the course of my research, I've come across a book about the physiology of violin playing from 1971 by a Hungarian team of musicologists, psychologists, and physiologists. It is WACKY.

They did experiments to see what happened to musculature, breathing, and heart-rate when violinists were playing. The test subjects are not named, but they played Bach and Paganini under experimental conditions and consented to have x-rays taken of the left hand in fifth position. One guy is pictured standing in his underwear with electrodes strapped to his body as he plays.
Hundreds of pages of 'electro-myography’, phasic-this and motor-that later, I’m not really sure what was the point of all this. The authors even issue a disclaimer that none of their results are conclusive.

One point that jumped out at me was an experiment showing the correlation between breathing and bowing. They put face masks on violinists while they played Bach’s Minuet from the E-major Partita and found that upbeats, upbows, and inhalations all lined up. Were the violinists aware of this? Was this something ‘natural’ or learned? If it was learned, was it specific to a particular style of playing or style of music?

Violinists talk about stuff like this all the time and it's often the unconscious habits and their being contrary to what we think we're doing that I find intriguing.

The physiology of violin playing is a fascinating topic in itself but, it seems to me, the really interesting questions arise where it ends.

Szende, Ottó and Mihály Nemessuri. The Physiology of Violin Playing. With a Foreword by Yehudi Menuhin; Preface by Paul Rolland; translated from the Hungarian by I. Szmodis. (London: Collet’s, 1971).

Johann Sebastian Marteau

French violinist Henri Marteau (1874–1934) is well known as a legendary soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. But did you know he named his son Johann Sebastian? Bach-philia = understandable, but.... poor baby!

Grumiaux, Szigeti, Menuhin, Oistrakh

Today I saw a photo of a rehearsal for a memorial concert for Queen Elisabeth of Belgium in Brussels, 1967, for the Vivaldi Four Violin Concerto with Grumiaux, Szigeti, Menuhin, and Oistrakh. What I would give to have heard that performance! I would've watched for hints of musical cameraderie, at the opposite end of the spectrum from the obvious competition/rivalry that can result from situations like these.

Fritz Kreisler

Louis Lochner’s biography of Fritz Kreisler is an absolute gem: it not only documents the violinist’s spectacular career in meticulous detail, it brings scenes to life. As a boy in Vienna, Kreisler studied with the eminent pedagogue Joseph “Peppi” Hellmesberger, Jr. who had “a weakness for ballet dancers.” Kreisler also studied with Bruckner, who had "a chubby, fat pug dog named Mops" – which, along with his classmates, Kreisler trained to run away when they played a Wagner motif and to wag its tail when they played Bruckner's Te Deum. His father, who played chess with Freud, discovered hashish in a box of Turkish cigarettes the young Kreisler was given in Constantinople.

Kreisler was an impractical person. He could never find his socks, he was shy around people and about going in the New York City subway. His wife Harriet has been accused of being a domineering presence in his life. But she was practical.

An Austrian citizen who became French and finally American, Kreisler resided in Berlin and NYC. He ate at Del Pezzo’s on W44th St. with Caruso and was a frequent visitor to Rembert Wurlitzer's violin shop on W42nd.

Kreisler studied with Massart, the teacher of Wieniawski, whose style of vibrato he came to share (along with Vieuxtemps and Ysaye). He knew Brahms and championed the Violin Concerto (the manuscript of which he owned at one time), but was not a follower of Joseph Joachim, its dedicatee. He knew Schoenberg, who took interest in his Beethoven cadenzas. He hardly ever practised. He did not take students. He had countless imitators, including the young Jascha Heifetz. He praised Milstein, Menuhin, Francescatti, and Stern. He was generous to a fault. He believed that the violin was a true mirror of a person’s moral compass:

To me, the man who loves justice will “sound” different from the man who is secretly capable of a mean act; the man who is cruel will “sound” different from the man who is humane.
…
Thus one way of perfecting musicianship is to conquer oneself, to rid oneself of meanness, to live the sort of life one can admire.

Required reading for any serious music student...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/arts/music/09composers.html?scp=1&sq=greatest&st=cse

Zefiro torna

My first-year performers--who play an eclectic assortment of instruments-- put this together in about half an hour after I showed them the bassline (the shoddy camerwork is mine):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2E54O_TwJ0

Another branch of the violin tree...

This quote captures perfectly the central themes of the violinist-genealogy project I am working on: purity of lineage, self-legitimation, and the quasi-mystical valuation of pedigree:

"As a seventeen-year-old about to graduate from high school, I felt that my own violin lineage was already quite impressive. Couched in Old Testament terms, Joseph Joachim, the distinguished German violinist, begat Leopold Auer, who begat Toscha Seidel, who begat me. Without doubt, I belonged to an illustrious family--one in which Auer's pupils Heifetz, Elman, and Zimbalist were in effect my uncles. If only some of that DNA would rub off!" (Arnold Steinhardt, Violin Dreams. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006, pp. 88-89).

Composer biographies?

When a friend asked me for a riveting read about a composer's life, I was stumped. What can you recommend to someone who has been reading Bill Clinton's autobiography? The finest composer vignettes I've read in a long time came under separate chapter headings in Alex Ross's latest book: Mozart, Verdi, Brahms... they all came to life. I steer students to Grove of course but encyclopedia entries don't really serve my friend's needs. Anyone got recommendations?

Gloria Cheng & Calder Quartet @ LPR

I offered to turn pages for the Adès PIano Quintet. What was I thinking? All the stress of being on stage without the pleasure of performing! Gloria was amazing in her set of Boulez, Saariaho, Messiaen. The Calders played Stravinsky's 3 pieces to perfection. I couldn't tell you what the Adès PIano Quintet was like--I was too focussed on not fucking up the page turns to listen, let alone enjoy it. The composer seemed to be pleased.

Best music book of 2010

Hands down, Alex Ross's Listen to This. The last chapter, on Brahms, made me weep.

Pierre Baillot says:

"Savoir travailler est un talent." "To know how to practise is a talent"

NYSO @ Carnegie Dec 24 and 28

I couldn't help thinking of the New York String Orchestra as the SAT Orchestra -- perfect scores, no room for error. These young players can play their instruments without breaking a sweat, but I wish they would've taken some risks. Jennifer Koh and Benjamin Hochman were spotless soloists in the thankless Violin-Piano Concerto by Mendelssohn. Daniel Hope and Paul Watkins were not spotless in the Brahms Double -- but there were moments of risk-taking.

Vadim Gluzman's Barber Violin Concerto

Vadim Gluzman's Barber Violin Concerto recording was featured on BBC Radio 3's best recordings of 2010. The reviewer said the second movement holds its own, while he preferred James Ehnes or Gil Shaham in the outer movements. I can see why: Gluzman's tone is red-hot -- which works in the second movement -- but the outer movements need to burn white-hot, luminous and transcendent. I heard Ehnes live with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2009. He gets my vote.